Philips Electronics North America Corp.: Philips CDD2000/20

John R. Quain

Acomplete CD recorder package for about $1,100 street ($1,295 list), the Philips CDD2000/20 represents an enticing offer. The software may not have all the sophisticated options professional CD-ROM developers need--such as Photo CD support or the ability to create hybrid CDs--but it does just about everything else with ease, including backup, archiving, and audio recording.

Fitting into a standard half-height drive bay, the internal version of Philips' double-speed CD-R plays and records disks at 1X and 2X speeds. With it you get an AHA-1540-compatible Adaptec bus-mastering 16-bit ISA SCSI adapter, SCSI cable, Windows 3.1 recording software, and one blank disk. Philips also offers the same drive as an external model with the same features for $1,180 (list).

On our tests we used the included WinOnCD ToGo! 1.4 software for Windows 3.1. The interface is styled after Windows 3.1's File Manager, so it's easy to find your way around. A top window pane displays the source material (usually from the hard disk), while the bottom pane reveals the directories for your CD recording. You simply drag and drop items between them and select Make CD from a pull-down menu.

During backup testing, we found that the software gives you considerable flexibility in dealing with files and directories that don't adhere to the ISO 9660 conventions. You can override the rules, change the filenames on the fly, or discard illegal files. On our On-the-Fly Recording test, the CDD2000/20 managed to record all the data faithfully to a blank CD in a respectable (for a 2X recorder) 25 minutes 34 seconds. You cannot verify the image before recording, but you can choose to "preview" to detect any potential problems, such as exceeding the subdirectory limit of the ISO rules.

The Windows 3.1 software doesn't have a one-button option for copying a CD-ROM, but you can make copies by changing the source drive and dragging and dropping directories from the original CD-ROM. One minor snag we did uncover in making such copies was that during an on-the-fly recording we had to switch on the program's performance test in order to complete a successful recording. Without that enabled, the software hung our test system.

WinOnCD will let you create multisession recordings, including mixed-mode disks containing Red Book audio and regular data tracks. In recording digital PCM files as Red Book audio, it failed to recognize the raw PCM files automatically, but after we changed the file format selection (Intel byte ordering versus Motorola), it worked fine. The only type of audio files the software did not recognize was those using the latest ADPCM compression standard from Microsoft.

At the time of review, Philips was in the process of putting together different software packages for the CDD2000/20. By the time you read this, Philips will be shipping the CDD2000/20 with brand-new bundles for under $1,000 (not based on WinOnCD software). They will be available for both internal and external versions and will address all popular applications up to and including audio and video. Although the company couldn't specify prices and availability at press time, it expected to offer a version with new WinOnCD 3.0 software for Windows 95 users by the end of March. The package is expected to support Enhanced CD (CD Plus) and hybrid disks at that time.

If it works as well as the Windows 3.1 version did for us, it should be an ideal package for business users who want to archive and distribute data on CD-ROM as well as create an occasional multimedia CD-ROM title of their own.

Philips CDD2000/20. List price: $1,295. Philips Electronics North America Corp., San Jose, CA 95110; 800-235-7373, 408-453-5129; fax, 408-453-0680.

Suitability to Task

                    Power     Ease

Initial startup     Excellent Excellent
Backup              Good      Excellent
Disk duplication    Good      Excellent
Format flexibility  Good      Good

Copyright (c) 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company